I think ultimately the problem is going to be that most people bring a Pro Tools session to a 5.1 mix. But since they probably won't have Vegas, I'll need to render stems for them which will have all the effects burned in and they won't be able to undo any effects I've done.

so, I feel like I won't be able to get as much out of the 5.1 studio...

maybe the thing to do is all my edits in Vegas and then export to OMF and open in Pro tools and do my effects there.

another reason I wish Vegas were more recognized out there.

Well, when I do my 5.1... I first do all of my video editing, but I don't render. I will export the stereo track as a WAV, which is then imported to Adobe Audtion2. Out of that stereo track I will create 3 new stereo tracks (front ,rear, center) which are then exported as a wav and re imported to Vegas and sync'ed up. I will use Vegas audio tools to take care of any minor finishing adjustments in the audio ..... and THEN the whole mess gets rendered.

I could be wrong... but I don't THINK there is anything preventing you from taking a similar approach with ProTools

You may be in a whole different category than me, but when I shoot a documentary I record 4 live channels--2 front and 2 rear. The fronts go on tape, the rears go on Minidisc.

After video editing I then build up the rear two channels in Vegas clip by clip, and after balancing and other tweaking I use Vegas to create a DolbyDigital 2/2 ac3 file for the DVD authoring step. No center channel, and I don't bother with the ".1" subchannel either.

It's very easy and inexpensive to set yourself up for a surround-sound environment, and Vegas does a very nice job of surround-sound editing.

"You may be in a whole different category than me, but when I shoot a documentary I record 4 live channels--2 front and 2 rear. The fronts go on tape, the rears go on Minidisc."

I completely agree....That's the easiest and by far the best way to do it... 5.1 recording in real time.

But there are circumstances that force a 5.1 mix AFTER the fact, which is tedious work, but entirely possible.

Thanks for the feedback, but I think my point is being lost. I don't have a 5.1 room. This client wants to mix in a place like Sound One, which charges $350/hr and has a Dolby Theatre to mix in. I will be creating all the elements - dialogue edit, foley, sound design, and ADR with an approximate mix, but the ultimate mixing will be done at the 5.1 theatre and thus I need to have a project that will be compatible with them, so I was wondering if anyone out there had ever needed to do this before, Using Vegas. People who work in Pro Tools do this all the time. They go to a 5.1 room and they open their project and it's good to go with all their plugins, etc. But I highly doubt a big Dolby Room in New York is going to be compatible with Vegas.

anyway, that was my questions.
thanks

Am I totally off by suggesting that you set your laptop (or whatever you are using to run this surround Vegas project) to output six channel audio (front left, front right, back left, back right, center, sub), and just run that six channel mix directly out of your machine and into the Dolby Theatre, that way you can play with it while you're hearing it? You can set the "120 (Dolby pro/film)" style of cutoff frequency under Project Properties, and you can set six separate audio channel outputs (you may need to switch to ASIO mode) in Preferences, Audio Devices.

Could this work?

I'm not doing a 5.1 mix. I'm editing (dialogue editing, foley, adr, looping, and sound design) in stereo. Then I take all the stems separated as Busses to the mix studio:
Bus 1: Dialogue Mono
Bus 2: SFX Mono
Bus 3: SFX Stereo
Bus 4: Backgrounds Stereo

No M&E mix.

so, I was just wondering who had done this before... There must be someone out there who is a sound designer, editor who doesn't have a dolby room to mix in who has to outsource?

Although your exact needs may not be specificlly covered, Dolby has some good technical resources on their site, starting point:

http://www.dolby.com/resources/tech_library/index.cfm

Even though you don't have 5.1 monitoring capability in your studio, you will still need to make the stereo mix sound good, so you might just mix the project in stereo and then give the 5.1 facility stems- full program-length stereo tracks for dialog, fx, music etc, and let them do the surround panning on that material.

thanks.

"stereo tracks for dialog, fx, music etc, and let them do the surround panning on that material. "

Stereo for dialogue is a really bad idea if you are mixing for 5.1.

Most dialogue is recorded mono and stays that way in a 5.1 mix but can be panned around if you want your dialogue to move around on and off screen.

I have recently mixed a short feature, 30 mins, in 5.1 using Vegas.

Note I did say mix, as well as sound design/edit.

I'd seriously be outputting multiple stems for the 5.1 theatre mix.

I wouldn't be too happy if a designer/editor presented me with a single mono dialogue premix, stereo SFX, stereo atmos Foley and music.

I used a combo of ProTools LE (which only outputs mono and stereo) for the sound editing and premixing and Vegas for the 5.1 mix.

I then did premixes of the dialogue edit as mono stems - four main dialogue submixes.

Spot SFX in mono and stereo - four mono submixes and four stereo submixes.

Atmospheres - four stereo submixes.

Synthesised sound effects (genereated using Digidesign's Expand!) 6 stereo submixes.

All of these were output (bounced to disk from ProTools) in your case I'd be rendering out of Vegas.

I imported the submixes as BWF files into Vegas, using the embedded timecode to place them onto the tracks, and then used the 5.1 panning to place them in the 5.1 field as necessary. As Vegas doesn't output BWF or anything with embedded TC make sure every track has countdown pips at the head.

Why all the stems?

To give myself the ability to mix the material and balance against music, which was added into the Vegas tracks directly from the composer.

The production didn't have the money for foley, hence I laid a lot of additional spot foosteps etc during the soundedit.

In all I had 30 odd tracks, not counting music, in the final mix in Vegas as submixes from the original 80 odd.. sorry I really didn't count them as they were in spearate sessions in PT.

I'd recommend setting up monitoring for 5.1 with Vegas during your edit to hear what you expect the mix will sound like in the 5.1 theatre if you can but output mono and stereo as that's what your mixers are going to want.

As for my mix I was able to output an AC3 for DVD from Vegas, author the DVD in Architect , a stereo downmix from the surround master in Vegas and output discreet mono wave files for all six tracks of the 5.1 mix for later encoding for film. When funding for a print is available.

Meanwhile the film, "Death's Requiem", will be playing at the Newport Beach film Festival in April and prior to that at Method Fest as well as Swansea Bay in the UK in June. Unfortunately all of these will be a stereo LtRt compatible mix off videotape... ah well I'm just the sound designer/mixer.

The film version of the 5.1 mix will have to be produced in a real 5.1 theatre because Dolby won't allow you to encode them anywhere else and the AC3 Vegas produces IS NOT correct for Dolby Digital for Film and wouldn't be allowed to be printed onto 35mm film.

Good luck with your film

Regards
New Hope Media

I think it's not the matter of AC3 compatibility, but the hardware/monitoring environment. You could actually play your tracks back from Vegas, but the whole mixing must be carried out in a Dolby-certified environment, inclusive of the very encoding, which must be handled by Dolby's encoder (hardware).

I do my own 5.1 mixing in Nuendo, but when you are going to a mix stage, I would simply render as many stems of parts as you can as suggested earlier (not anticipated 5.1 channels of course). Optimally you would probably want to deliver an OMF project such that you still maintain the most flexibility with tracks to be remixed in 5.1, but rendering all of your separate tracks out to stems will work - how much you deliver may also depend on how much remixing the client wants to do at the larger facility.

No Ac3, isn't the issue. You most likely need to deliver 24/48k files (check with the facility but aiff or wav will probably work). You can deliver Dolby stamped 5.1 DVDs from Vegas (the encoder is licensed by Dolby) but for theatrical release, as peteros said, you need a Dolby certified mix stage.

"No Ac3, isn't the issue."

I didn't intend that it was the only issue, just wanted to let the uninititated know that there is a difference between what Vegas does as a Dolby Digtal AC3 file for DVD and what is required by Dolby for Theatre release.

At the end of a fairly long post I used a shorthand reference.

Strictly speaking the whole mix does have to done in a Dolby Certified mixing theatre and the encoding has to be attended by a Dolby Consultant, here in Audstralia that would be Bruce Emery, an old friend of mine but used to also be Steve Murphy until he relinquished the shared role back in 2003.

Having mixed in Dolby Certified theatres for film and, separately, television and completed the Dolby Digital Broadcast and Professional Training on Dolby Digital and Dolby E back in 2001 I'm reasonably well versed in the process both in theory and practise.

Not all the users on this conference have professional audio backgrounds so, sometimes I guess I keep the answer simpler than it could be.

Delivering an OMF would be the best way to maintain flexibility, and what, as a mixer, I would expect the sound editor to deliver.

Of course, without EDL Convert as an intermediate step, Vegas isn't capable of OMF so an AAF might have to be the answer. The problem with AAF is compatibility between different platforms so a test early on in the tracklay between your setup and the intended mixing facility would be prudent.

As far as the audio file format, either aiff or wav is usually the standard for file delivery, inside OMFs, AAFs or as discrete files. Most mixing facilities would accept 16bit 48KHz files as a minimum standard but check with them on the bit rate they require.

New Hope Media

newhope - I was actually agreeing with what you said, but following on another reply, mine was confusing. Your posts summed it up very well.

No probs, I thought I'd been a bit longwinded, who me? :-), and confusing.

New Hope Media